


baking blueberry pies

by friedgalaxies



Series: otsuchi soul [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Cooking, Food as a Metaphor for Love, M/M, Pining, Secret Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25478812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies
Summary: It is not so much that the Akimichi love food as that they know food is love, Chouji most of all.
Relationships: Akimichi Chouji & Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Chouji/Nara Shikamaru
Series: otsuchi soul [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843909
Kudos: 38





	baking blueberry pies

Chouji is rolling out the crust for a blueberry pie when Shikamaru drops in. 

He knows it’s Shikamaru because the old wooden floorboards of the old wooden house are creaking from the direction of the front door, which means it can’t be anyone already inside the house. There was no knock, so it’s either one of his family members or Shikamaru-- because even though they’re best friends and she keeps a piece of his soul twined around her little finger, Ino at least has the good grace to knock before she enters the Akimichi house, because Inoichi raised her with manners. But Chouji wouldn’t put it past Shikaku to raise his son with all the sense of manners that the gods gave a goat, despite the fact that the man is like an uncle to him. 

So it can’t be anyone not directly related to him or not Shikamaru, because they would have at least knocked, or, in Kakashi’s case, just come in through the open kitchen window and cut out the middleman entirely. The footsteps are too light to be an Akimichi, graceful and soft where every step one of his family members takes on the familiar wooden floorboards is intentional, and at this point Chouji has the sound of the footsteps of everyone he holds near and dear to him memorized like a second heartbeat. 

He’s rolling out a pie crust when Shikamaru drops in without knocking, but at least Chouji hears the soft click that means he’s shut the door behind him, which he doesn’t always bother with in the first place. Chouji smiled, secretly, privately, to himself, gently flipping the pie crust onto the wooden rolling pin already in his hands. 

His front is dusted with flour, all down the apron Hinata so kindly gifted him one year, when their friendship was still new and she was still too nervous to look him directly in the eyes. But it was no secret that Chouji loved to cook, just like any member of his family did. That didn’t mean all of them were good at it, but they tried, at the very least. 

His father had taught him, lifting Chouji up onto a stool to watch at the counter when he was still too small to help out, barely big enough to toddle around the house on his own without coming crashing down on chubby little knees on hardwood floors. Chouza had laughed as his young son watched in wonder and excitement, making clumsy grabs for the blueberries he was turning into pie filling and gently, delicately, crimping the edges of the crust with blunt, broad fingers till it was as intricate as a lace filigree. 

Blueberry pies held a special place in Chouji’s heart, because that had been the first thing he learned how to make from scratch. Blueberry pies were love, and an apology, and condolences, and a promise all wrapped up in a flaky crust and a dusting of powdered sugar. 

(To this day he still made blueberry pie when he was sad, even if he didn’t want blueberry pie. He made blueberry pie when he was heartbroken or angry or scared and there was nothing else to do but make measurements he knew by heart and roll out the dough for a pie crust till it was smooth. He made blueberry pie when he couldn’t sleep and he made blueberry pie when he didn’t want to sleep. He made blueberry pie like it was a journal and every blueberry in the well-known filling was another word out of his pen.) 

For all that Chouji had learned battle from his father, on training grounds and in firefights, painting with the broad, hard strokes of their family ninjustu, he had taught him delicacy and finesse in their own kitchen with those same hands Chouji had seen break a tree in half with barely a flick of an enlarged finger not but hours before. 

They cooked often, together, a time when the two of them could be quiet and communicate only in murmured instructions and soft directionals as they moved about the kitchen, knowing each recipe they attempted by heart. Chouji loved his father, he really did, still had nightmares about the time he thought he had died and had seen Asuma’s broken, bloody body flashing through his mind’s eye like a ghost and-- 

Chouji loved his father, but he spent more time cooking on his own than he did with others. The kitchen in the Akimichi house was large, always well stocked, always ready for use. Chouji was clumsy, with his words and his body and his hands, but cooking was a kind of language he knew like a savant. Cooking was warmth, and safety. Food was a promise. Food was love. 

Chouji was gently settling the pie crust into a glass pan when Shikamaru dropped into the kitchen, leaning against the wide doorway with all the cool nonchalance of a man who had never known the word “hurry” in his entire life. He was still in his jounin blues, vest on but unzipped, ponytail slightly askew and a few wavy strands coming to frame his face like stray ink strokes. Chouji’s breath caught in his throat. 

It never ceased to surprise him how beautiful his best friend was. 

“Hey.” Shikamaru said. Chouji grinned, pressing the pie crust into the edges of the pan. 

It was all about being delicate, to preserve the flakiness of the crust. 

“Hey.” Chouji returned. There was a screech of wood on wood and he knew Shikamaru had pulled out one of the tall wooden stools on the other side of the kitchen island, elbows doubtlessly already dusted in flour from where they sat at the edge of Chouji’s work surface. 

“Who’s that for?” Shikamaru asked. Chouji shrugged. 

“Can’t a man make a pie in his own home, without any ulterior motive?” Chouji shot back, though the both of them knew it to be only teasing. A glance upward confirmed Shikamaru’s own grin, hidden just barely behind his folded hands. 

“Most men can, but you don’t.” 

He was right, like Shikamaru usually was. Food was love. Chouji’s heart was big and bleeding and far too soft for his own good and food was love. Food was love where Chouji failed. Food was safety. Security. The knowledge that his friends, his family, his loved ones would be safe, would survive another day. An Akimichi’s stomach could never be full, as was the curse of their kekkai genkai, but food was love to an Akimichi the way one needed air to breathe. 

Food was the promise that he cared. Food was the confirmation that you would be safe, with warm food filling your stomach and the love it was cooked with filling your heart. Food was the time spent creating the dish, with the intent to give it away simply for the promise that the recipient would not go hungry as much payment as was needed. Food was safety, and food was love. 

Chouji’s stomach could never be full. His stomach could never be full no matter how much he ate, which was the penance he paid for the multi-size justu he’d been learning since before he could walk. His stomach could never be full with the satisfaction of a meal, which had taken him a long time to learn, that even though he could never feel full he could still hurt himself if he didn’t keep his limits in mind. He had long since learned that the stopping point was not where his stomach was full and he could no longer eat without the uncomfortable pressure of feeling like he was going to burst, but instead when his chest felt full and warm of the love food brought him. 

(His chest empty and cold no matter how much he ate, so he stopped caring about limits in one direction or another. Cold like a grave, like his teacher’s body, like the blood on his lips and the look in his blank eyes. Empty like the spot in their team. Empty like a bed. Empty like a wedding altar. Empty like a family picture. Empty like an infant’s hands where her father’s finger should’ve fit. Empty like the space in a wedding band. Empty like a carton of cigarettes.) 

The love of a meal created for him by someone who cared about his health, about his safety. The love curated spent eating a meal with people who cared about him and he cared about in return. The love that stoked the eternal warrior’s flame in the pit of his lungs and continued to drive him to protect and serve and keep safe his village, his family, even through the pain and blood and tears and suffering. 

(Three little candies the size of his enlarged thumbnail, burning, burning deep in the bottom he didn’t have to his stomach. Burning the stomach acid back like a dog in a fight, sharp teeth stuck in the lining of his stomach and biting, chewing, clawing through till it burnt away the rest of him and there was nothing left but a mountain-sized corpse.) 

Chouji didn’t have a rebuttal for that, not one all of Shikamaru’s genius would believe, so he shrugged and brushed the bottom of the crust with egg whites. “You just get off shift?” 

“Yeah. Headed straight here.” Shikamaru confirmed. Chouji frowned. 

“You need to eat.” 

No words had been said more in his household, by his family, off his own lips, except maybe, “are you hungry?” Hungry not just for food but for warmth and safety and compassion and love. Hungry for the concern that drove one to ask the question in the first place, to cook a meal, to serve it without taking any for yourself. 

Shikamaru was skinny, almost concerningly so. Chouji’s grandmother would take him by the elbow and poke around at his ribs and insist he was too skinny, far too skinny for a shinobi, far too skinny for a jounin especially. Chouji laughed at the shock and betrayal on Shikamaru’s face when he wouldn’t come save him from the assault on his ribs and his pride, but he knew his grandma was right. Shikamaru was skinny, small, even, small the way a shinobi should be but small in the way that made Chouji’s heart brittle with concern. Shikamaru had been shorter than either he or Ino till he finally hit his teenage growth spurt and shot up like a weed, but instead of finally becoming proportional it was just like he’d stretched and stretched upward without taking on any more mass. 

They were all small, all so, so small, concerningly small, but Chouji was big and his heart was bigger and food was love. 

“You always tell me to eat.” Shikamaru said, eyes rolling. Chouji rolled his eyes right back, slipping a perfectly cut circle of parchment paper into the pie crust and measuring out a handful of pie weights to go in with it. 

“And? I’m always right.” 

He knew he was right even if Ino insisted on dieting, even if Shikamaru insisted on consuming nothing but nicotine and self-doubt, even if his teammates continued to push themselves and roll their eyes at his offered gifts of food, no charge, his treat. 

Sure, neither of them would be as big as he was. Akimichi were giants even without their jutsu. They were born big, lived big, died big. No one would measure up to an Akimichi at their best, at their healthiest. Even Chouji’s great-grandpa was big, still throwing himself around with all the disregard of his health of a younger man, laughing a booming laugh bigger than he was. Neither of them would be as big as Chouji, because they were Nara and Yamanaka and not Akimichi, never Akimichi. 

But that didn’t mean Chouji couldn’t be concerned, couldn’t leave pastries where he was sure Ino would find them and silently pile more food onto Shikamaru’s plate that he was sure he would eat, because they knew food was love and they could never say no, not to Chouji. So Ino would frown in the mirror and pinch her waist and Shikamaru would live off nicotine and empty promises and Chouji would continue to ask if they were hungry and tell them they needed to eat even if they said they weren’t. 

“Sure, can I have a slice of that pie?” Shikamaru asked with a grin, just bordering on feline. 

“It won’t be done for a couple more hours.” He whipped a hand towel at Shikamaru’s knuckles like his mother used to do to him when he tried to sneak pie fillings from the pot. “And no, it’s for Kiba.” 

“Why? What happened?” Because Chouji never cooked without an ulterior motive, even if that was just getting his friends to eat. 

“He just went through a bad breakup.” 

“With who?” 

“Dunno, didn’t ask. Seemed pretty distraught about it, though.” Chouji delicately rested the pie on the top rack of the oven, shutting the door behind it and cranking the little rooster-shaped timer to ten minutes. He flicked on the stove burner and filled a pot part-way with water. “For a genius you sure can be obtuse, sometimes.” 

“Hey, it’s not my fault the Hokage has me running around like her personal messenger boy. Hardly gives me a smoke break, damn troublesome woman.” 

“Funny, she never mentioned working you to the bone like that at our lunches.” In went the fresh blueberries into the pot, along with a full cup of white cane sugar and a pinch of sea salt. “She’s right, though. Smoking is bad for your health.” 

“Wait,” Shikamaru started, voice raising in volume. Chouji turned with a ginger brow raised, because it was rare Shikamaru spoke in more than a mutter just clear enough to understand. “You have lunch with the Hokage?” 

“Every week.” Chouji grinned back at Shikamaru’s blatantly flabbergasted disbelief. The blueberries were shiny and dark in the water, bobbing like boats in harbor with each turn of his wooden spoon. Scraping down the edges, in the corners, careful not to leave anything behind lest it get burnt and ruin the whole batch. “She and Pa used to work together, you know.” 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“Why wouldn’t they? They’re less than a decade apart in age, y’know.” In went a vaguely measured handful of spices; cinnamon, paprika, chili. Cinnamon for warmth and sweetness, paprika for savoriness, chili for the slightest little kick that would heighten the sweetness of the blueberries in contrast. “No reason for them not to.” 

“A decade is more like a century when you’re shinobi.” Shikamaru muttered bitterly. Chouji laughed, knowing it was from his friend’s jealousy at how close he was with their Hokage, despite the fact that Shikamaru worked directly under her. 

“Hey, don’t let the Hokage hear you say that.” Chouji grinned. Shikamaru grinned back, leaning forward on his elbows like a challenge. 

“And here I was thinking you would’ve just told on me anyway.” His grin was crooked and there was a scar on his lower lip that shined white with the stretch of mirth and it would’ve been easy, so easy, to just lean forward and kiss- 

But things were never easy for Chouji, so he turned back to the blueberries boiling innocuously on the stovetop. Breathe in, out. Bite the inside of his mouth and hide it with a close-lipped smile, just big enough to assuage a rising concern. Most people bought it, because though he was generally clumsy with his hands and his voice and his words, Chouji was a better actor than most people knew. 

Good at lying, about the fact that he wasn’t hurt about being forgotten or skipped over. Good at pretending, like there wasn’t a secret temper deep in the chest burning, burning, always burning, hot bile rising in his throat and being swallowed like a reflex. Good at acting, like he wasn’t in love with his best friend and his shadow and the person he trusted most in the world, the person he would give his own life for ten, a hundred, a thousand times over for if it meant he would be safe. 

Good at acting like he wasn’t in love, and it wasn’t tearing him apart. 

Of course, despite all the facts that he knew and how observant he was and the fact that he would simply never buy a fake emotion or face Chouji plastered himself over like a sloppy coat of paint, Shikamaru did not know his best friend was in love with him. Shikamaru did not know, and he could never know, because Chouji didn’t know what he’d do if Shikamaru cleanly, politely, delicately detached himself from Chouji’s life like he had never been there in the first place. 

(But it was never clean or polite or delicate. Kiba’s recent breakup was proof enough of that.) 

Shikamaru couldn’t know because he didn’t know, because he wasn’t even into men like that in the first place. Chouji didn’t think he’d react violently, with the way he humored their guy friends and their crushes on boys and their messy, teenage relationships. Chouji doubted he’d react at all, instead simply retreating into the place that Shikamaru went inside himself when things weren’t turning out the way he expected and he needed time to think about it. Shikamaru was good at that, at retreating without making it look like he was and tactfully distancing himself from the situation at hand, putting on a clever enough mask that no one would have suspected he wasn’t in his own head in the first place. 

(He had spent a lot of time in that place directly after Asuma’s death, not that anyone but Ino or Chouji knew.) 

Shikamaru simply couldn’t know because Chouji was scared, and fear was unbefitting of a shinobi, of an Akimichi above all, disrespectful to the ancestors that had paved the ancient techniques for them many many generations ago and disrespect to the warrior’s flame that burned eternally in his soul. The flame that choked him up with smoke and ash when he thought about Shikamaru finding out, when he thought about the look on his face or the way he’d tuck his hands in his pockets like he didn’t care but he did care, he cared so much, he cared more than anyone would have ever thought and he didn’t let anyone know about. 

Shikamaru Nara’s fear of rejection and loneliness, the worst kept secret in Konoha. 

So he would never find out, and they would keep having these silly talks and trade offs where it could be flirting if you turned your head and looked at it from a different angle. They would keep spending this time together where Chouji wanted so desperately to reach out and touch, touch the man he loved, twine their fingers together in a way that was anything but platonic and brotherly and crush their lips together and kiss, kiss him till all the air left his body and he could barely breathe from the ecstasy of it all and-- 

So he would never find out, and Chouji would keep telling him to eat and keep baking blueberry pies, because food was love and if he couldn’t love Shikamaru then he would feed him instead. 

“Maybe.” Chouji hummed. The timer dinged and he removed the crust from the oven, setting the glass tin aside to work on the lattice that would be lain overtop while the filling continued to simmer away, thickening as it burned water off in great curls of steam that licked up the underside of the wooden cabinets. 

Wood creaked and he knew Shikamaru was standing, was stretching, was exposing that little sliver of skin where his stomach smoothed out into his hip bones, where there was a scar where he’d been too slow and had gotten whapped with the sharp end of a wiry whip of a tree branch for his efforts. Chouji likely knew Shikamaru’s body better than his own, better than Sakura knew their bodies from exploration with her chakra, from the numerous times she’d healed them with a frown on her face and a cuff on the backs of their heads as she sent them away with the warning to not end up in her office again or she’d make them regret it. Chouji knew Shikamaru better than he knew himself, but for all that he knew his best friend he couldn’t see where this love for him that Shikamaru apparently didn’t even know he himself had was hiding, where Ino’s sharp eyes and sharper mind had seen it as easily as if she were exploring the great scrolls in his mind by hand. 

Chouji knew Shikamaru loved him, of course. They loved each other like best friends, like family, like people who had been destined to spend their lives together since before they were even born loved each other. They loved Ino the same way (Chouji didn’t love Ino the way he loved Shikamaru, for all that his love for her was deep and unending as the ocean itself) that they loved each other. They loved their parents in a similar way that they loved Ino. Their parents, their blood families, of course mattered to them a great deal, but there was no love or bond that ran as deep as that between an Ino-Shika-Cho. 

So they loved each other like family and Shikamaru would never love Chouji the way Chouji loved him, but that was okay because Chouji would continue to bake blueberry pies and tell himself that food was love.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! this series has been really fun to work on so far, i hope you're all enjoying it as much as i am. as always, comments, questions, and concrit are always appreciated!


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